LEED Gold Costs an Extra… Nothing
Advocates of green building, and specifically of the US Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED program, have maintained that green building does not have to mean extra cost. An exceptional case for this argument is found in a recently completed multi-purpose university building. The less-than-poetically named Education Building III (SG III) at the University of Maryland’s Shady Grove campus was built with the intent of attaining LEED Silver certification and ended up being certified as LEED Gold, but without an increase in the budget.
The Universities at Shady Grove (USG) is a collaborative effort by eight institutions in the University System of Maryland, begun in 2000. Due to its popularity and convenience, the demand for classes and services at the Shady Grove location grew quickly and necessitated the construction of a new, multi-purpose building with classrooms and services.
The SG III building is a 5 story multi-purpose educational building. It incorporates 41 classrooms (including 10 computer classrooms and 2 distance ed classrooms), 81 faculty offices, a 20,000 sq. ft. library and media center, student lounges, 2 open computer labs, a bookstore, administrative offices, and a recreation center/gym.
The building incorporates a green roof and native plantings to help control site runoff. Water conservation was a key concern for the SGIII building, and the building even earned a credit in the LEED rating system for innovation for achieving savings 44% below LEED baseline models for potable water use.
Energy conservation measures for connectivity included providing bike racks, designated car pool parking spaces, electric vehicle refueling locations, online carpool coordination, and easy access to bus and metro systems. And the building utilized high-efficiency HVAC systems and demand ventilation control so that mechanical systems only provide conditioned air where it is needed. Natural daylighting is also incorporated into the building. These measures enable the building to offer energy savings of more than 25% below the LEED baseline.
The building also makes extensive use of recycled materials, including insulation, recycled glass in the atrium, and the exterior blue panels. Other sustainable materials used in the building include wheat board and cork wall coverings, bamboo and linoleum floors, and tables made from banana fiber.
The building was able to be built in this way without incurring any additional cost by incorporating planning for green features at the outset of the project. Energy modeling, to calculate how the building would perform, and cost modeling, to predict the construction costs for different options, were both used to develop the building and evaluate the design for the most efficient and cost-effective solutions. More than 90 percent of the energy saving options proposed by the design team were able to be carried out with no cost increase to the building. "Through the use of sunscreens, improved glass, improved wall U value, improved roof U value, reduced lighting (watts per square foot) level, added daylight control in classrooms, VFD in chillers, and CO2 sensors, the design/engineering team projects a total net-energy cost savings of 29 percent."
Even though its name isn’t much, with the wide array of green features it posesses, and the manner in which it achieved these goals without any added cost, the building is going to make a name for itself.
Building Information:
Size: 192,000 sq. ft.
Location: Rockville, Maryland
Architect: Cannon Design
via: Environmental Design + Construction Magazine
